Phusion Passenger is an Apache and Nginx module for deploying Ruby web applications. It has a strong focus on ease of use, stability and performance. Phusion Passenger is built on top of tried-and-true, battle-hardened Unix technologies, yet at the same time introduces innovations not found in most traditional Unix servers. Since version 3.0 it can also run standalone without an external web server, making it not only easier for first-time users but also ideal on development environments.

Recent changes

Phusion Passenger is under constant maintenance and development. We are pleased to announce Phusion Passenger version 3.0.8. This is a bug fix release.

[Nginx] Upgraded preferred Nginx version to 1.0.5.

[Nginx] Fixed various compilation problems on various platforms.

[Nginx] We now ensure that SERVER_NAME is equal to HTTP_HOST without the port part.
This is needed for Rack compliance. By default Nginx sets SERVER_NAME to whatever is specified in the server_name directive, but that’s not necessarily the correct value. This fixes, for example, the use of the ‘map’ statement in config.ru.

[Nginx] Added the options passenger_buffer_size, passenger_buffers and passenger_busy_buffers_size.
These options are similar to proxy_module’s similarly named options. You can use these to e.g. increase the maximum header size limit.

Via Ubuntu packages

John Leach from Brightbox has kindly provided Ubuntu packages for Phusion Passenger. The package is available from the Brightbox repository which you can find at:

http://apt.brightbox.net

Add the following line to the Third Party Software Sources:

deb http://apt.brightbox.net hardy main

(The simplest way to do that is to create a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ containing the deb instruction, and then run ‘apt-get update’).

Once you’ve done this then you can install Phusion Passenger by running:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-passenger

-or-

sudo apt-get install nginx-brightbox

(Note that John is currently packaging 3.0.8, so it might take a while before this release shows up in the apt repository.)

Via RedHat/CentOS packages

YUM repositories with RPMs are maintained by Erik Ogan and Stealthy Monkeys Consulting. Please note that Erik is currently packaging 3.0.8, so it might take a while before this release shows up in the yum repositories.

Step 1: install the release package

The easiest way to install Phusion Passenger and keep it up to date is to install the passenger-release package from the main repository:

“Phusion” and “Phusion Passenger” are registered trademarks of Phusion. “Rails”, “Ruby on Rails” and the Rails logo are registered trademarks of David Heinemeier Hansson. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.